八戸 4

Not how I wanted to end my vacation

The JR station I mentioned in my last post was about a five minute walk away from the hotel, which was convenient. There, I could wait for the phone call from my insurance company to find out what the story was with the available mechanics. There was also a hotel next door to the train station, and while it would be a long shot to see if there were any rooms available, I still had a little bit of hope.

But I was about to lose it all.

The insurance company called again at around 1100 hrs. It was the same translator from the day before. She said that she found a garage in Hachinohe that would be able to take Tackawanna. In addition, one of the mechanics spoke English, and I could pay for the repair by credit card. The garage would be open on Wednesday.

Wednesday. Yesterday was Monday. That meant that I'd have to wait in Hachinohe for two days, with no car and the parts of the city that I wanted to see already seen. They gave me the name of the garage, but they couldn't send me an e-mail with the garage's information for some stupid fucking reason, so they said that I would have to wait for the garage to send me an e-mail.

I was desperate at this point. I begged the translator to keep looking. Expand the search to within 100 km if she had to. If she could find a place open today or tomorrow, I would get there somehow. She said that she'd look into it. I went back to waiting in the waiting room by the entrance.

At around 1315 hrs, I decided to call back and see what they'd found. Someone else answered the phone, but I explained to them my situation, and is there anything that they could do? They said that they'd call me back in 10 minutes. I hung up and waited.

15 minutes later, I got a phone call again, this time from the translator. There was no one available within 100 km, and they really meant it this time. At this point, I gave up. I had to be back at school on Wednesday, so I told them that I'd be going home by train, and that I'd have to come back for Tackawanna later. I then went inside, and booked a one-way ticket back to Aizu.

I ended up having to stand up for most of the ride, as the trains were apparently overbooked due to the holiday. It wasn't really a comfortable ride. However, there was a section on the ride from Sendai where I could have a seat and rest a while. It was at this point that my fate got worse. I received an e-mail from a professor of a seminar that I had to attend. He had assigned three new hour-long seminars for us to attend.

On Wednesday through Friday. At 1000 hrs.

JUST.

It took me six hours to get back to Aizu through the JR network. (It may have taken less time had it not been for that magnitude-4 earthquake that decided to occur while I was on the shinkansen.) I was exhausted from travelling when I got back, and I felt defeated and stressed. I was supposed to go on vacation to relax and unwind. The car troubles over the past two days, however, had undone all of my relaxation and replaced it with even more stress than I had left with. Now, I have to take one of the days after the seminar to travel 11 hours roundtrip to get Tackawanna and bring her back to AIzuwakamatsu.

To be honest, it's my fault for wanting to take the trip at all. It was too far away, it's now going to cost too much money, and the amount of shit that's going on at school was conflicting with my available vacation time. (Seriously, two day's notice for a seminar? Not even a week's notice?) I know that I am here to study and all, but there's still other things to do other than study at work. Even my advisor wants me to relax more. But at this point, I'm going to have to struggle to do so.

So, Hachinohe. Very nice city, and you could probably see most of the attractions in a day like I did. However, I won't be back. Or going anywhere else for a very long while.

Back to work.

-wp